THE ELECTRIC CAR EXPERIENCE

 

For once I can describe myself as an early adopter. I recently acquired an electric car. We are, partly from necessity, a two car family and our twenty year old petrol-driven motor finally gave up the ghost this year. We realised that the cost of keeping it roadworthy exceeded its value by a considerable multiple. It had been mainly an urban run-around, used for short journeys, and the final straw was the realisation that it would shortly cease to meet emissions standards within the M25, significantly limiting its utility.

However replacement was not the only or even the primary motive. I have long argued for electric vehicles as an important route to decarbonising the economy, so I had a strong professional interest in experiencing for myself the joys and pitfalls of ownership, and understanding what the barriers might be to their widespread acceptance as an alternative means of personal travel. Driving an electric car is a delightful experience, but purchase prices are significantly higher than conventional petrol driven vehicles, and there is currently less choice, particularly in relation to larger models.

But prices are likely to come down, choice to improve, and the other barriers are probably more important. The key questions are the connected matters of range and the adequacy of charging infrastructure. These may determine whether most motorists will be willing to have an EV as their only car. Will it actually meet their needs if they are travelling on holiday or to visit distant family?

So this is what I set out to test with a recent 240 mile journey to West Wales. This is just beyond the nominal range of my car, as claimed by the manufacturer, so after allowing for the effects of cold weather (which slightly reduces battery performance) and the need for a safety margin, it was clear that I would need a significant recharge at some point in the journey.

This is where understanding the options becomes important. Stopping on a four hour plus journey makes sense anyway, but that means that ideally one wants to be able to do a significant recharge in an hour. This where understanding the units of battery energy becomes important. My car has a total energy capacity of 52 kWh.  I can recharge it from an ordinary 3-pin plug in my drive at home at a rate of 2 kW. That means a full recharge would take about 26 hours, although I would usually be thinking of recharging when it falls to about 50%. For much of the time 2 kW on an overnight charge might be quite adequate. However that’s not good enough for recharging on a long journey, or even if I’m doing a lot of local driving with longer daily journeys.

Fortunately it is possible to get much faster charging points. I have a home charger, paid for by government grant, which charges at 7 kW. There are plenty of publicly available charging points at 7 kW, and quite a few at 22 kW. Motorway service stations typically offer 46 kW or higher, depending on the type of EV. Remarkably, at the ancestral family home in West Wales we have access to four charging points, each offering 22 kW within 300 metres of our house, in the local village car park.

So the infrastructure is starting to grow. Long journeys still require a bit of extra planning, but ranges in excess of 200 miles mean that an EV will meet the needs of virtually all the UK journeys that we ever contemplate. Long journeys though will demand a good distribution of charging points at 22 kW or above. For people who are not fortunate enough to be able to do home charging, there will need to be a large network of local points, and many of these will be at 2 kW or 3 kW, although local supermarkets are increasingly a source for recharging at higher kW levels.

The current networks of lower power “lamp post” charging points will be adequate if not ideal for EV owners provided there is a reasonable density of these in their area. The main drawback of reliance solely on public charging points will arise  if there are incentives to maintain a semi-permanent connection to the grid, as EVs could provide a valuable source of storage for the power system as a whole.

So what are the remaining issues. The first is the extent to which drivers can rely on a planned recharge. A number of charging locations, especially on motorways, provide only a single charge point for my type of vehicle. This will be a problem as EVs become more popular, and if a queue develops. The second is reliability. Too often some of the charging stations are out of order. Whether this is a simple technical fault, which ought to improve with experience and better maintenance, or whether there are local network constraints, is not clear.

The other irritation is the sheer number of different networks, each of which may demand use of their own mobile phone app, and each of which may have a slightly different tariff. This imposes a substantial cost on users in terms of time, setting up of accounts and passwords, and so on. One urgent need, therefore, is for a much simpler payment by contactless card that can operate across different networks.

But my overall positive is simply the experience of driving an electric vehicle, in terms of low noise, responsiveness (amazing acceleration), energy saving and reduced pollution. Once converted I can’t envisage returning to diesel or petrol power.

CULTURE WARS, COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS, RISK AVERSION AND INTER-GENERATIONAL JUSTICE.

Apologies to regular readers who expect this site to provide analysis or comment on the subject of climate change or the low carbon economy. My excuse for writing about the pandemic here is that the parallels and connections with climate questions will become ever more apparent, and will be with us for the foreseeable future.

Cost benefit struggles with the big issues, but it does help to expose the questions. The economy versus public health poses a false dichotomy. The real debates should be about inequality. And in terms of inter-generational divides, climate change is a much more relevant matter. 

As many people[1] are starting to observe, the debate over how to balance protection from the virus against maintaining economic activity is already playing into the culture wars that have developed over the last few years.  Very loosely, Trump, vocal Brexit supporters (but not necessarily a majority of those who voted for it), opposition to climate action and denial of climate science, market fundamentalism, Tory donors, and much of the political Right are to be found on one side, arguing for the primacy of “the economy” and that “the cure [lockdown] is now worse than the disease”. Internationally one might add, at different times, populist authoritarians such as Bolsonaro, Erdogan and Duterte.  Those favouring the “cure” include the WHO, internationalists[2], most medical professionals, many Left-leaning liberals, (typically) climate activists sometimes citing environmental factors as a likely cause of the pandemic, and currently the greater part of public opinion. If one had to sum up in a phrase the collective position of many in this group, then “… no return to business as usual” might be an approximation.

These loose coalitions are of course both stereotypes. Both sides will in future be forced to recognise the difficulties inherent in maintaining consistent positions that assign absolute priority to either health or national income. Both will also have to reconcile inevitable pressure for less future reliance on global supply chains (less of China) with an equally powerful case for more, or at least better, international cooperation both in health and wider economy issues. Most governments are caught in the middle, enforcing restrictions while hoping for “business as usual”.

With hindsight of course it seems likely that early and effective action, as in Germany, would have avoided some of the stark choices now confronting us. But we (in the UK) are where we are, and for a variety of economic, health and social reasons, long term total lockdown is also proving untenable. The direction of travel is towards a compromise – the search for gradual relaxations that keep infections within some degree of control.

However, the cost benefit arguments remain important, not least because they reflect so much on our implicit values and choices, and represent dilemmas that will continue to haunt us for some time.  It is worth evaluating the arguments, in the first instance on the wisdom of imposing strict lockdowns rather than just advisory and fairly minimal social distancing.  And in order to concentrate on the essential choice, rather than unhelpfully suggesting that the answers lie, as they often do, “somewhere in the middle”, we should contrast the first extreme, the primacy of the economy and the need to avoid negative impact on GDP, with the range of policies that are effective in reducing infection but result in major economic shutdown.   The purist cost benefit argument is that an enormous economic cost has been incurred in order to protect the lives of predominantly elderly and infirm people, and that that cost will in turn bring its own health costs through increased poverty, unemployment and inequality. The cost is typically quantified either in terms of likely lost GDP or of the cost to the Treasury (c. £350 bn) and the public purse, which can be set against an estimated number (perhaps 250,000) of (disproportionately elderly) lives saved. The implied valuation of human life comfortably exceeds the values normally implicit in government policies, in health and elsewhere.

Attaching a value to human life in this way is not a heartless obsession with financial indicators or economics. It is simply a recognition of reality, especially in almost anything involving health or safety. In health policies the concept is explicitly recognised and refined as “quality of life adjusted life-years” (QALYs). In a resource constrained world most people would accept that, forced to choose between life-saving treatment for children and young adults, on the one hand, and short life extensions for the elderly on the other, the former would usually win. QALYs form a realistic basis for assessing the relative value of different medical interventions, and are widely accepted as a starting point for an informed discussion of what should be prioritised in a health system.

Calculations appear to show an “excessive” expenditure from current policies to save a relatively small number of QALYs. It is additionally argued that the economic impact of lockdowns will itself lead to large amounts of not necessarily well-recorded ill health and death, including treatments postponed or not sought, and increases in domestic violence and mental illness.

Finally, this can be seen as yet another example of inter-generational inequity in which the young are made to suffer for the benefit of the old.

At first sight these look like powerful arguments, founded on both explicit cost benefit analysis, in this case loss of output (GDP) or public spending versus value of life, and an implicit cost benefit comparison in terms of different health outcomes. But, as often happens with really big issues, simple arguments can collapse under closer examination. There are several counter arguments:

·         the assumed counterfactual is incorrect; the implicit assumption that, had there not been lockdown, personal behaviour and the economy would have carried on more or less as normal, can now be seen to be demonstrably wrong. One reason is that individuals are risk averse and do not take the actuarial approach to personal risk implied in cost benefit analysis. A corollary is that, in the immediate context, the notion of a collective choice between public health and the national economy is, to a large extent, a false dichotomy.

·         poor health outcomes associated with macro-economic problems do not generally stem from lower GDP per se. They stem from inequality not from overall lower incomes. Promised government spend goes part of the way to redressing the uneven short-term effects of the crisis, and protecting the most severely affected. But the longer-term impacts, particularly if there are significant structural changes in the economy, will be much more important. Prevention or remedial action on any increasing inequality stemming from that will be essential. But that action is necessary anyway.

·         inter-generational injustice is an overstated issue; mortality means there are a limited number of ways in which one generation can steal from the future, and it is not obvious that this is one of them.

The counterfactual – not imposing lockdown and “letting the pandemic take its course”.

Countries have taken approaches that differ in detail, but most have been essentially similar in their approach. Even where fewer formal restrictions are imposed, as in Sweden, actual behaviours and outcomes are not so very different. Tellingly, many in the UK were already modifying their behaviour, and creating their own forms of social distancing before formal lockdown was imposed. With a full-blown explosion of cases and deaths, and hospitals collapsing under the weight of new cases, it is inconceivable that we would not have seen massive changes in personal behaviour, seeking the same outcomes, albeit in uncoordinated and less effective ways, and very likely  a degree of panic, with broadly similar damage to economic activity. The difference is that the damage would have been the result of individual consumer choice, not of government imposed restriction. Most of the economic damage therefore became inevitable as soon as the virus spread into much wider national populations. In reality there never was any way of avoiding the shock and its economic consequences, although there were and remain ways of handling the crisis well, badly or very badly.

There is a reason for this. In matters of life and death, people do not adopt the actuarial approach to personal risk that the cost benefit approach implicitly assumes.  Actuarial-style weighting of probabilities and multiplication by an assumed “cost of damage” makes sense in a policy context of comparing different health interventions. But it does not apply to personal choices. A simple well-known test demonstrates this – the Russian roulette question. “How much of your personal wealth would you sacrifice to avoid participation in the game?” The probabilities can be varied, and the actuarial assumption would be a linear progression from zero (infinitesimal risk) to 100% (when faced with certain death). Students and others faced with this (fortunately hypothetical) question invariably volunteer significantly more than the “expected value” of their survival.

This is not irrationality. It is simply personal preference. Faced with threats to life most people are substantially risk averse, and will make significant sacrifices for the safer option. We can argue that wide public support for lockdowns reflects rationality and risk aversion, rather than mass hysteria.

It's about inequality, stupid!

There is no doubt that the stress on health services is, unless treatment of Covid-19 patients were refused, inevitably bringing some unavoidable collateral damage through diversion of resources from other health problems. But the policy argument is usually much more focused on the potential mid and longer-term health effects of lower incomes and higher unemployment. The economic impact is already and will continue to be very unequal, with some untouched while others are devastated. Sensibly most current remedial measures are about protecting the worst affected individuals, in respect of mortgages and rents, and a degree of protection that will allow businesses, and future jobs, to continue to pay wages and survive the crisis.

In other words, the policies that enjoy almost universal support are about remedies for an immediate and horrendous inequality. It’s ironic that they should be implemented (in the UK) under a governing party not known for its commitment to equality objectives or public spending. But the same considerations should apply to medium term health impacts. It is the extent of inequality that matters, much more than the overall level of GDP. The point is well summarised in a recent Canadian Medical Association Journal article.[3]

“It should not be surprising that economic growth does not lead to improved health. A wide range of research studies of rich countries have revealed that greater national wealth, by nearly any measure, does not lead to better human welfare. The United States, with the highest GNP per capita in the world, has a lower life expectancy than nearly all the other rich countries and a few poor ones, despite spending half of the world’s health care bill. The United States also has the greatest levels of poverty of any rich country, with correspondingly poor health outcomes and huge health disparities. Its population’s health is on a par with that of Cuba, a poor nation that has faced economic embargoes for the past 50 years. The population of the United States is also less healthy than the population of Greece, whose economic status lies in between.

What leads to health in the industrialized countries is not absolute wealth or growth but how the nation’s resources are shared across the population.  Above a certain threshold of inequality, a more egalitarian income distribution within a rich country is associated with better health.”

It will be interesting to see how far the lessons of the current crisis are carried through into future tax, expenditure and social policies.  It is again ironic that politicians and commentators, mainly on the Right, who give overwhelming primacy to the economy, and are now anxious to play up the social and health impacts of lockdown, have usually been those least concerned with the phenomenon of inequality. 

Inter-Generational Justice

It has always been the case that you are more fortunate to be born, or to reach the employment or housing market, in good times rather than bad. But the idea that one generation can collectively, and to its own advantage, permanently deprive its successors is more difficult. Mortality ensures that this is possible, essentially, in only two ways.

The first is through running up external debt. This is impossible in global terms. It is possible nationally, although since most countries will face similar challenges, there is no automatic reason to assume that it will happen. Measures to protect employment and businesses, will lead to an expansion of national and personal debt, but this consists of debts that we owe to each other. Since the holders of that debt tend to be excessively concentrated in higher income groups, or among older generations, there will be an enhanced case for redistributive taxation, and we have already identified the necessity for reducing inequality as a necessary condition for a healthy society.

The second is through running down the capital stock, of plant, buildings etc and also human capital. This is a more challenging question. There is no particular reason to expect physical destruction of capital stock, though there is likely to be significant re-assignment if consumer preferences and public choices change after the crisis.   

But this takes us to an even more important subject. The only way in which we are obviously and dramatically running down our capital stock is through continued destruction of the natural environment. That really is the impossible and undeserved legacy that we are bequeathing future generations.

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[1] Culture wars are infecting the UK’s pandemic strategy. Robert Shrimsley. Financial Times, 20 April 2020.

[2]A general term to include supporters of international institutions and cooperation as a general principle. I would have added the “Remain” camp, but a quick survey of FT online comments suggests this group may be quite divided on the issue.

[3] https://www.cmaj.ca/content/181/5/281.short  

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CLIMATE ACTION AND CO2 REDUCTION. CAN INDIVIDUAL CHOICES MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Or is it just a case of making us feel like we're doing something to help? (A second big question inspired by school sixth form students.)

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little; do something.”

“Use your voice, use your vote, use your choice.” (Al Gore)

The first point to make is that any early action on reducing CO₂ emissions should be considered as having a high per unit premium value for the emissions saved.  Early reduction is more valuable than future savings in terms of postponing key climate milestones.[1]  This delay provides more time to develop options both in finding better means to reduce emissions, and in coping with the consequences of climate change as it develops.  Individual actions have the particular advantage that they can have some effect quickly and immediately, whereas government policies and international agreements tend to take much longer to come into effect.

The more difficult question is what kinds of changes people will make, including changes in lifestyles, are plausible, how large they are, and how many people are going to engage with them. This is in large measure a question about how significant changes come about, both in the very general terms of culture and lifestyle, and in social and behavioural norms.

A few years ago a BBC reporter was persuaded to try the experiment of becoming Ethical Man[2], to determine what savings he, with his family, could make, but these were to be within the bounds of credible change and broadly keeping to his familiar lifestyle. He almost certainly went further than most people will be prepared to (giving up his car for example), but it was estimated that they had cut their carbon footprint by about 20%, and up to 50% in terms of directly controlled energy use for normal household purposes and travel. So it is fairly easy to show that some significant reductions are possible without fundamental and systemic change. But will sufficient numbers of people be persuaded?

Many say we should drive less, fly less, eat less meat. But others argue that personal actions like this are a pointless drop in the ocean when set against the huge systemic changes that are required … a single person’s contribution is basically irrelevant (much like a single vote in an election). But my research … has found that doing something bold like giving up flying can have a wider knock-on effect by influencing others and shifting what’s viewed as “normal”.  [Steve Westlake in The Conversation.] [3]

Communication is critical.  If one individual starts cycling to work, or eating less meat, or taking a shower instead of a bath, then the impact is minimal. But social interactions with friends, relatives and colleagues can over time change behaviour much more widely. The Westlake article suggests the effects can be dramatic.

In a survey I conducted, half of the respondents who knew someone who has given up flying because of climate change said they fly less because of this example. That alone seemed pretty impressive to me. Furthermore, around three quarters said it had changed their attitudes towards flying and climate change in some way. These effects were increased if a high-profile person had given up flying, such as an academic or someone in the public eye. In this case, around two thirds said they fly less because of this person, and only 7% said it has not affected their attitudes.

I wondered if these impressionable people were already behaving like squeaky-clean environmentalists, but the figures suggested not. The survey respondents fly considerably more than average, meaning they have plenty of potential to fly less because of someone else’s example.

Some social psychology research suggests that strongly held positions held by sufficiently large minorities can lead quite quickly to a change in what is seen as the consensus position or as normal behaviour. It is quite possible that we are currently in the process of reaching that critical mass in popular appreciation of the threats of climate change. Scientists have been warning about climate change in no uncertain terms for at least the last 30 years, but the shift to a position where a majority in developed countries see it as the greatest threat to themselves and their children has been comparatively recent. However it is difficult to say how much of that shift is attributable to dramatic climate or weather related events (such as the Australian bush fires), how much to awareness promoted by wildlife programmes (David Attenborough) and the media attention attracted by activists such as Greta Thunberg, and how much to the gradually increasing willingness of people to talk about the subject with their friends.

If people are seeking to influence others then avoiding the charge of hypocrisy is important. Very few things are less impressive than some celebrity taking a private jet to a conference to argue for everyone else to change their lifestyles. So that provides another strand to the case for individual action, at least if you want to have an influence on others.

Overall it is clear that individual actions can make a difference. But of course they are by no means sufficient to meet what is needed. That will only come about through much more far reaching and systemic changes which depend not just on personal initiatives but on major infrastructure investment and innovation. The other effective actions that individuals can take is to “use their vote”, demand that their elected representatives support effective action, and use their influence as consumers to put similar pressure on business – much of which is already starting to get the message.

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[1] The arguments are presented more fully on another page, Cumulative Carbon (button on bar at top of page): http://co2economics.blogspot.com/p/reference.html

[2]2006. Details can be found at https://spotlightenglish.com/listen/the-ethical-man

[3] https://theconversation.com/climate-change-yes-your-individual-action-does-make-a-difference-115169

PERSONAL CARBON FOOTPRINT

 What is the single biggest thing an individual can do to reduce their carbon footprint?

An ECI colleague was recently asked to give a short overview of renewable energy and climate change issues to school sixth form students. They presented in advance a dozen quite interesting and difficult questions, to which a number of colleagues contributed suggested answers. It was a smart set of questions and the answers may be of interest to a lot of adults too. So in my next few postings I intend to summarise some of our collective wisdom. This is the first of those questions.

The English writer Sydney Smith: “It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little. Do something.”

Al Gore: “Use your voice, use your vote, use your choice.”

The above quotes raise some profound questions to which I hope to return, but let’s start with the simple question of personal carbon footprint. The answer may be very different for different people, as no two people start from the same position, have the same tastes or have the same opportunities. For example if you are a vegetarian, cutting down on meat is no longer an opportunity for you to make further reductions. And if you always go on local cycling holidays, there is no point suggesting you cut down on your flights. Similarly your daily transport choices will depend on where you live. So the right answer is to work out what is best for you, consider the biggest impacts of your own lifestyle, and prioritise what things you want to change. The most significant personal reductions are likely to come from food, travel choices, home energy use (especially heating); and consumer products, so I'm going to make several different suggestions. None of these incidentally are intended to make your life a misery or imply return to some pre-industrial fantasy world. Nor do most of them require expensive investments. But they are intended to be about a more clever use of resources.

Eating less meat is potentially one of the biggest ways to reduce our carbon footprint. The calculations suggest that beef has a higher footprint than pork, which is higher than chicken. Of course reducing food waste and excessive packaging is helpful too.

If you are already vegetarian and fly a lot for holidays, then fewer long-haul flights will mean a pretty large reduction in your carbon footprint. Driving, especially when with passengers, is a lot better than flying, if you have the time and inclination. Taking the train is better still. If you are using a petrol or diesel car, we can note that the biggest sources of excess fuel use are generally taken to be speed and congestion.

If we turn to other everyday activities then there a lot of small savings that people can make. But it’s worth bearing in mind that one of the biggest consumptions of energy in the home is for heating. Turning your domestic heating down by one degree C, if you can do so without discomfort, has been estimated to reduce consumption by up to 10%. Not heating the house when you are not at home will help too. And if your house still has an old-fashioned gas boiler then you should convert to a condensing boiler as soon as possible. It can cut your bills and your carbon footprint for heating by up to a third. Last but not least, there may be some major savings to be achieved by reducing the heat loss in your home, draught-stripping of windows and home insulation (if you have’nt already applied these measures).

Of the other substantial energy uses in the home the next most important are in the kitchen – cooking and refrigeration. Obviously there are small easy changes you can make which will reduce consumption, like making sure your refrigerator is not set too cold, or not over-filling your kettle. But when you come to change your appliances, pay attention to their energy efficiency ratings.

Still in the home, another simple but substantial energy saving is switching to LED lightbulbs. The energy saving compared to old -fashioned incandescent bulbs is over 80%. Again it is a simple step which both saves money and reduces your carbon footprint.

Finally there is the indirect impact of the energy and carbon emissions associated with the various consumer goods we buy. If we all reduced our consumption of manufactured goods, but especially those that have a high carbon content, then that would certainly be an important impact. This is a much more complex and contentious subject and I hope to address this and related issues in later postings. It is not always easy to tell which are the worst industries in causing emissions, but one recent report by the World Bank has claimed that the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global emissions, more than aviation and shipping combined.

You should expect to see more public discussion on this in the future.

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However the next question will be: Do individual actions have an impact or do they just help us feel good?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT. HOW MUCH OF A SOLUTION DOES IT PROVIDE TO CUTTING CARBON EMISSIONS?

Transport is one of the main sources of CO₂ emissions and it is sometimes assumed that more buses and trains are the solution. Public transport has a collective value in its own right, but public transport per se is not always the silver bullet for huge reduction in CO₂ emissions. Emissions per passenger-kilometre is an imperfect metric, but we have to accept that trains and buses do not always score well. They can, with too few passengers, have rather high emissions per passenger-kilometre, even compared to private cars. Policies to reduce total transport emissions can only be developed, therefore, if full account is taken of the multiple factors in play. Public transport will have a major role but our approach needs to be holistic, and integrated with other objectives as well as climate priorities.

It’s also the case that the economics answer to most problems – reflect the issue properly in prices and all will be well – does not always fit well with transport. Fuel is already highly taxed but much travel demand is essential and price-inelastic; higher fuel prices may have limited, or insufficient, impact on the demand for private vehicle use. This implies the need to look at wider policy options. These include the unglamorous world of other regulatory and planning interventions, including congestion pricing, traffic management and town and land use planning.

How does public transport score on emissions?

It is difficult to find statistics that are reliable, up-to-date, and truly representative, but it is not hard to find reasonable if approximate indications. The comparative (average) figure for the private car^[1] is 171g per person-kilometre, falling to 85g for a driver and passenger, and 44g for a driver and three passengers. For buses the numbers likewise depend on fuel used, size and age of bus, type of journey and so on. My indicative estimates^[2] for buses are DEFRA based and from the website https://carbonindependent.org/ . The figure for bus performance is an average CO2 emission of 822 g / km. The DEFRA statistics allowed Carbon Independent.org to estimate the average loading of UK buses at 9.2 passengers.

In very approximate terms this means that the bus must have at least nine passengers in order to get down to 90g per person-kilometre and be able to “compete” on emissions with the private car with one passenger. Comparable results have been quoted by the US Department of Energy. Seat occupancy rates in cities may generally meet this challenge, but in many suburban or rural areas this is much less likely to be the case. That is certainly suggested by the estimates cited in Carbon Independent.org, with much higher g/km figures cited for the average of bus journeys outside London. So for some journeys the bus will be generating lower emissions than the private car, but on lightly loaded routes, often those serving more remote areas, significantly more. Prima facie this is a disappointing finding for anyone expecting a simple solution to transport emissions.

A contrasting benchmark is the London Underground, with emissions estimated at a mere 9g per person-kilometre (and reduced further as the power sector moves towards complete decarbonisation); this offers an excellent example of public transport providing very clear emissions savings. A key factor is clearly utilisation or load factor, which in turn tends to reflect population density.

Of course the public transport network is about more than just passenger-kilometre comparisons. It is often an essential for other social and economic reasons – such as inclusivity, enabling economic activity, and reducing congestion. And for the personal choice of the environmentally aware, it will be preferable to choose public transport when it is available and meets the need, since the incremental emissions will be close to zero.

What mix of policies do we need?

The answer in the long run has to include low or zero carbon fuel sources. Electric vehicles (or equivalent alternatives such as hydrogen) have the potential, ultimately, to reduce emissions to close to zero. But while technology may be the primary means to achieving the ultimate goal of zero emissions, there should also be a big premium on the large, valuable and immediate gains to be made simply by reducing emissions from the stock of vehicles in use now and in the near and medium term. If more public transport per se is not a solution for the mitigation transport emissions then it’s worth examining other options. This blog has consistently emphasised the high value of immediate[3] emissions reduction as both postponing climate milestones and providing option value for the future. Immediate and urgent actions have a higher value, tonne for tonne, than future solutions.

Two factors that are a major contributor to energy consumption are speed and congestion, for obvious reasons. Speed matters because the energy requirement tends to rise as the square of velocity, as anyone who has used a trip computer to make this comparison on the motorway will testify. Congestion matters because of the loss of energy implied in constant stopping, starting, and idling.

The remedies are relatively straightforward to describe, at least in principle, although more complex to implement. Reducing and/or more strictly enforcing motorway speed limits could have a significant and immediate impact, with an additional benefit in terms of safety. Congestion pricing, applied successfully in London and elsewhere, could be used more widely in the UK and other major cities. Both these measures continue to have their merits even in an all-electric low carbon world, and are complementary to effective planning and good public transport systems.

The search for better and low carbon transport policies will continue, but it needs to be a mix of low or zero carbon sources of energy, clever urban planning, and economic incentives to reduce congestion, as well as well-designed public transport systems.

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[1] BEIS figures as quoted by the BBC and shown in my previous posting of 2nd January 2020 on this subject.

[2] The author quotes estimates from different sources for out of London and in London buses, while aggregate figures are drawn primarily from a 2007 DEFRA study. Given the changes in bus fleets, and inclusion of some gas powered or hybrid vehicles, these are arguably dated estimates. However more recent 2015 figures released for the actual performance of new Routemaster buses on London routes show significantly higher fuel consumption and hence emissions than the indicative numbers I have used.

[3] Cumulative Carbon. Has the economics lost contact with the physics? Or use tab on bar at top of page.

CRUISE SHIPS GET A BAD PRESS ON ENVIRONMENT.

Are they significantly worse than aviation? In any case the same policy issues, of failure to price or tax CO₂ emissions, are relevant.

My last posting addressed one of the issues arising from the failure to price any of the carbon/climate externality of aviation into the cost/price of aviation fuel. Among other things this has, in the absence of low carbon aircraft alternatives, encouraged a possibly unsustainable expansion of demand for travel, and distorted the choices that travellers make between different modes of transport. In that posting I compared the emissions impact of flying and driving for a hypothetical choice of holidays travelling 2000 km on a round trip to the South of France; the key measure was grams of CO2 per passenger-kilometre.

But the issue is not confined to aviation. The same problems arise for shipping. Greenhouse gas emissions from all forms of international transport contribute to anthropogenic global warming, but were never covered under the Kyoto Protocol and continue to escape effective action, in the form of a carbon tax or a carbon price, to limit emissions and mitigate climate impacts.

So it seems fair, in this context, to consider the impact of another alternative type of holiday. More recently there has been much criticism of the negative environmental impact of cruise ships. This is by no means confined to emissions, and includes the overcrowding impact of very large cruise ships on major tourist destinations, such as Dubrovnik or Venice. Ships also tend to use heavy fuel oil which is particularly bad in terms of its immediate local consequences on air quality.

But the most serious issue for shipping is CO₂ emissions, and, in terms of comparison with other choices for personal travel, some attention has been given to measuring these. Most published information on emissions statistics comes from the cruise companies, and it is not always easy to draw exact comparisons with other modes of transport.  Among other factors emissions per passenger-kilometre may be a rather poor metric since so much depends on the length and nature of the journey and the consumption of fuel for powering on-board services (lighting, catering, etc). And cruises will tend intrinsically to cover shorter travel distances, so some holidays based on short haul cruises will lead to lower emissions than some long-haul flights.

The BEIS has also put a figure on ferry transport - 18g of CO₂ per passenger kilometre for a foot passenger, which is less than a coach, or 128g for a driver and car, which is close to our earlier figures for a long-haul flight. But ferries ages and efficiency will vary around the world - and a ferry won't get you to the Caribbean, although a cruise ship or ocean liner would.

A 2010 paper[1] in Energy Policy presented the results of research into international cruise ship journeys to and from New Zealand. CO₂ emissions from such journeys were calculated using an activity based, or “bottom-up”, model. The estimates for individual journeys by cruise ships to or from New Zealand in 2007 ranged between 250 and 2200 g of CO₂ per passenger-kilometre (g CO₂ per p-km), with a weighted mean of 390 g CO₂ per p-km.

Carnival Corporation and plc, which owns nine cruise lines, claims its 104 ships emit an average of 251g of carbon dioxide equivalent per "available lower berth" per kilometre. Given improvements since 2010, this seems consistent with the earlier study which had argued that values similar to those of economy-class air travel could be obtained. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566

The Energy Policy paper also calculated price elasticities and international cruise journeys for transport purposes were found to have a greater relative decrease in demand than plane journeys if the impact of carbon pricing was analysed. In other words, putting a price on the environmental damage would be even more effective in reducing emissions from cruise ships, reducing demand for cruises as a preferred holiday option and incentivising cruise companies to develop cleaner solutions.

There is often a “shore-side” perversity as well. The absence of any penalty on burning heavy fuel oil means that ships will also continue to pollute the local environment in port when it would be a straightforward matter to power on-board facilities through connection to the local electricity network, which will often be based on a cleaner fuel mix.

Once again the transport and travel sectors provide a textbook illustration of the need to reflect clear externalities into the pricing of travel, so that consumers can make choices that come closer to reflecting a balance of personal benefits and societal damage. The evidence is that this can work both by shifting demand to less “carbon-intensive” activity , and by reducing the environmental impact of supply.

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[1] Carbon emissions from international cruise ship passengers' travel to and from New Zealand. Howitt et al. Energy Policy. Volume 38, Issue 5, (May 2010)

THINKING OF A CLIMATE FRIENDLY HOLIDAY. BUS, TRAIN, CAR OR PLANE?

The Carbon Footprint of Personal Travel

News item. Tuesday 14th January. The government has decided to use public money to support Flybe. More disturbing than casual use of public funds to support failing business is the announcement of intention to review air passenger duty. As we argue below failure to tax aviation fuel is a distortion of the market in favour of the highest emissions forms of transport - another subsidy from an environmentally challenged future to a self-indulgent present. Air passenger duty represented a small step towards redressing the balance and encouraging transport modes with lower emissions. Flybe is a major operator of UK domestic routes where there are more rail and road alternatives.

Most readers of this blog are increasingly environmentally conscious, particularly in relation to climate change. 
Transport may not be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is still a major contributor and in some respects one of the most difficult sectors to convert to low carbon alternatives. It also, in many instances, offers a lot of personal choice. So it is a worthwhile exercise to compare the environmental costs of the choices we, individually, make. The calculation can be complicated, but some very interesting ideas arise in the process of making the comparisons. My example will be the choice that a traveller to the South of France might face, assuming a 1250 mile or 2000 km return journey. These may represent very different experiences but for many people this is a real choice. The BBC recently published comparative tables, as shown below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49349566

These numbers are realistic, at least as broad averages, and align quite closely to statistics quoted by other sources. But there are a number of qualifications and observations that can be made.

·         Numbers are invariably quoted for “average” or typical flights, average aircraft or cars, and car journeys including urban driving, and are not necessarily accurate for any particular journey, aircraft, or road vehicle. This analysis also ignores the carbon footprint associated with the manufacture of the cars, trains, buses or planes.

·         For the purposes of a simple comparison, we should disregard the “marginality” argument, that if there are spare seats on any form of public transport, then an individual decision to use that mode of transport has near zero energy and environmental impact. This is technically correct but the argument tells us little about the reality of transport investment choices or what makes sense in policy terms.

·         Airline flights carry an additional penalty in non-CO2 emissions, according to the BEIS data. However the weighting of different GHG in terms of impact is itself a complex issue. But this clearly a major factor.

·         The occupancy rate is crucial for all modes of transport. The implicit and broadly justified assumption for air travel is that typical flights are usually full.  Trains and buses tend to be more lightly loaded. The carbon footprint per passenger mile for the car depends on the number of passengers in addition to the driver. Two in the car halves the footprint as a first approximation.

·         For the car the assumed average is the overall driving average in all conditions including urban and secondary roads. For a typical long journey, on trunk roads and French autoroutes with minimal congestion, and observing or staying a little below the speed limits, one should expect a typical modern diesel car to produce emissions much closer to 130g per km, as compared to the quoted 171g.

·         The other critical assumption is the fuel source for electricity generation (in the case of the train). However the calculation should relate to the incremental power generation induced by the mode of transport, not necessarily the average fuel input per kWh. This would considerably reduce the apparent advantage of the French railways, if incremental load is generated from fossil fuels.

·         The table does not include electric vehicles. If it did  the same question would apply – of dependence on how the electricity is generated. On the basis of current UK sources of generation this suggests a CO₂ footprint of about 80g per km for small EVs, as compared to 171g per km for average petrol/diesel vehicles (driver only in each case).[1]

If electricity production can be made carbon-free then the ideal is any mode of transport that is electricity based. This simply reflects the now widely accepted view that the path to decarbonising transport rests on the decarbonisation of electricity followed by the penetration of electricity into the transport market.

And the environment friendly choice between flight and a conventional car journey?

If the individual has a petrol or diesel car, and the choice is between car and air travel, then, purely in terms of CO₂, the choice is finely balanced for a single occupancy car as against a flight. However the inclusion of non-CO₂ impacts shifts the balance decisively in favour of the car. Additional passengers have an even greater  effect, with two people in the car halving its emissions[2]. The flight is associated with emissions equivalent to 254g per passenger mile, and the car journey with only 65g per passenger mile. For a family of four on my hypothetical return journey of 2000 km, the carbon footprint is approximately 2.0 tonnes for the flight, but only 0.5 tonnes for the car journey.

So purely on an environmental perspective, the preference should be clear.

Current policies discriminate in favour of air travel and against the car

Of course there are several factors that can determine choice of travel mode, including convenience – which strongly favours flying, but in a world that clearly requires progress towards low or zero emissions, one might expect that the costs and prices of the alternatives would at least  reflect the huge additional environmental cost of flying. But this is not the case.

Car drivers pay very substantial fuel taxes, while aviation fuel is tax-free, and it takes little effort to work out that in many instances flying will be cheaper than driving. Advance booking for a flight from London to Nice, for example, can cost as little as £100 return fare. This is a perverse incentive, and continues to be responsible for a very substantial environmental cost, which I have previously argued could be valued at a sequestration cost [3]  of at least £75, will fall heavily on an increasingly near future.

The cost of cheap air travel

Cheap air travel has brought great and welcome opportunities for mass market leisure travel, but its cost has been so low that it has also hugely expanded the volume of travel and significantly changed lifestyles. Wealthy British families can routinely travel to their second homes in France for a weekend. Others routinely commute weekly by air between work in one European city and home in another. And young men from London organise stag weekends in Las Vegas.

Failure to reach international agreement on the taxation of aviation fuel has in consequence resulted in a subsidy from an environmentally challenging future to what some might see as a self-indulgent present. 

Time to find a sustainable solution? Electric aircraft are starting to look like a credible option, at least for short-haul. Otherwise it will have to be synthetic fuels (from an electric route) with a limited amount of sustainable biomass.

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[1] The difference is largely attributable to the substantial proportion of low carbon generation in the UK.

[2] In fact extra passengers have a small effect on fuel consumption, so this is a small but not very significant exaggeration.

[3] I have previously suggested a figure of $200 per tonne to represent a minimal realistic cost of future carbon extraction from the atmosphere.